From: Dan Glover (daneglover@hotmail.com)
Date: Fri Jul 09 2004 - 21:15:46 BST
Hello everyone
>From: "Arlo J. Bensinger" < >
>Reply-To:
>To:
>Subject: Re: MD the metaphysics of free-enterprise
>Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 13:19:35 -0400 (EDT)
>
>
>I mention this because it is the core of my criticisms. Capitalism exists
>now
>without referent to anything beyond money. It's not that money is bad, or
>unnecessary, but that actions in the marketplace should come secondary to a
>greater understanding (or dialogue) of what is Good. Perhaps, since
>Christianity is the majority religion in this country, if more business
>owners
>would actually ask themselves the cliched "WWJD?" before engaging in market
>activites, much of this discussion could be eliminated. I doubt, for
>example,
>that Jesus would justify the conditions in Tijuana because it increases
>profit
>margins for the Coke executives. Or that he would approve of the dumping of
>tons of poisonous lead into groundwater to save money "just because we can
>get
>away with it". But not just Jesus; the Buddha, Mohammed, White Buffalo Calf
>Woman, Avolokiteshvara, name your Prophet or Messiah,... and my point with
>the
>MOQ, Quality, for Quality (as Pirsig indicates) is what causes us to
>continually create the world, and thus invent religion as a response to
>Quality.
Hi Arlo
It's been my experience that most business owners are very responsible
people and they care deeply about their fellow human beings and the
environment. There are a few who do not and these few tend to overshadow the
good that's done by responsible business owners. Such generalizations are
rarely fair, IMO.
>
>The individual names differ, but as Joseph Campell argues with the
>Monomyth, the
>fundamental meanings and realizations revealed through religious practices
>are
>universal. They have to be, since they are all constructed as a response to
>Quality. And it is these "truths", the monomythic constructions, which must
>supercede the pursuit of wealth. Modern capitalism disallows this, saying
>that
>there is nothing that is immoral in the pursuit of wealth. We can have free
>markets, and still focus on "doing good", if we are guided by Quality and
>not
>capital as the primary, all-important force in life. In short, the
>individual
>mythological referent "WWJD", could be very simply mapped (via the
>Monomyth)
>onto the statement "What would Quality do?". Indeed, it has been when
>Pirsig
>paraphrased Plato "And what is good, Phaedrus, and what is not good, need
>we
>ask anyone to tell us these things?"
>
>Now, having said this, this is what I mean when I say the dialogue should
>be
>about "doing good" and not "earning money".
You may have heard of R. Buckminster Fuller. I think Robert Pirsig mentions
him in one of his books. Anyway, in Fuller's autobiography (Critical Path)
he writes of how as a young man just out of the armed services he started a
home construction business dedicated to doing good things rather than to
just making money. Well, as you may guess, by the time he hit his middle 30s
the construction business went belly-up, all his friends and family who had
invested with him lost their money, and he was left by himself, standing on
a bridge considering whether or not to jump.
If a business doesn't earn money it will not be a business long. Period. And
all the good just comes undone.
Thank you for your comments,
Dan
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